And add to that list the vagaries
of the loan player market. This has
always struck me as a strange one, particularly
as the idea of loaning players to other
clubs was still quite rare up until
the Millennium.
These days clubs put players on such
ridiculous wage deals, that the very
second they spy a stray shoelace they
can't wait to punt the poor blighters
out the door to some unsuspecting victims.
Djibril Cisse's career has been a strange pattern of loan deals having signed for Liverpool from Auxerre on peculiar terms, namely where he failed to play for the first year. Then he rocked up in Marseille on a temporary deal before signing permanently, and now, we're led to believe he is going to play the same trick at Sunderland. What price a permanent transfer next summer?
There are many many others, and I won't
bore you with the long list, but how
many times have you heard yourself saying,
"Ah, I remember him," as AN
Other footballer rocks up for an ill-spent
month in March at a Premier League struggler
- Milan Baros and Laurent Robert, you
know who you are.
But the best of the lot must be Hernan
Crespo, who incredibly has only just
parted company with Chelsea well over
two years since he last pulled on a
blue shirt, and even prior to the 05/06
season he'd spent a year 'on the borrow'
at AC Milan. Put another way, 33 league
starts for the Blues in five years.
It's not even as if the guy wasn't a
bit handy, or that Chelsea couldn't
have negotiated a his return to the
Bridge when Abramovich was crying out
for goals under Mourinho. So instead
of changing the player's destination,
they changed the manager's! I just don't
get it. Evidently.
